High school students unveil OOSS protest plan

Oakville Beaver

The Ontario government has the power to impose contracts on teacher unions that have not signed locally-bargained agreements by Dec. 31.

However, a local students’ group fears that should this happen, teacher unions will impose a two-year (the length of the agreement) ban on extra-curricular activities. This means no sports, no clubs, no after-school homework help, no band and much more.

With this in mind, a group of Abbey Park High School students founded Organization of Ontario Secondary Students (OOSS), which is pleading with both sides to come to some kind of resolution.

OOSS is doing its final push before the holiday break with a letter campaign. Students at Abbey Park, joined now by those at Iroquois Ridge and Oakville Trafalgar high schools will participate in the campaign. It consists of several actions.

Firstly, students will sign two petitions, one that will be sent to the provincial government and the other will be sent to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF).

The other part of the OOSS action will see students sign placards that will be displayed on school walls. Later, those placards will be mailed to Minister of Education Laurel Broten and OSSTF president Ken Coran.

With both actions, the students hope to show all sides their discontent over the labour dispute, which has resulted in teachers cutting extracurriculars. The students also aim to pressure both sides to come to an immediate resolution to their dispute and to show the devastating effect the conflict has on the student body.

“We are not siding with the government, nor are we with the union,” said Nivetha Govindaraju, OOSS member and Abbey Park student, in a news release. “We believe that a level-headed approach will not only preserve the legitimacy of our movement, but also showcase the student voice. We simply want our voices to be heard in this issue and for it to be solved as immediately as possible.”

OOSS currently has 7,700 users on Facebook and has representation at schools in Halton and Peel.